Bad time for bad foul in New Orleans

There is no need for commissioner David Stern to launch an investigation to see if the Hornets had put a bounty on Blake Griffin, but shouldn’t Jason Smith have been more aware of the irony that would attach to his blatantly flagrant foul on Griffin in Thursday’s game against the Clippers in New Orleans?

Every sports-loving Louisianan had been rocked a few days earlier by the full-season suspension handed to Saints coach Sean Payton for being in charge of a team that had paid its players for injuring opponents. Had Smith thought, for even an instant, about the lunacy of the violent foul he was about to commit on Griffin in the fourth quarter of the Hornets’ victory, you’d like to think he would have wrapped up Griffin as he headed to the basket for what likely would have been a “poster” dunk, rather than body-check him as he did.

Clearly, Smith wasn’t thinking at all because he raised his arms like a prize fighter who had just scored a knockout as he left the court upon being ejected, and that made his later apology sound pretty hollow.